It’s been a while since I did anything with the translation of Origen’s Commentary on Ezekiel which I commissioned. The book has sat in a collection of .doc files on my hard disk, while other tasks went forward.
The main obstacle to progress is getting the book typeset. I did buy a copy of Adobe Indesign CS5, with a view to doing it myself; but I simply don’t have the time necessary, nor, in truth, the energy.
This evening I have enquired of an advertiser on PeoplePerHour.com whether he would be interested, and at what price. I want to get this thing published. To do otherwise is to waste the time and money spent on it. And when it has been printed, and sold whatever quantity of books it is going to, we can get the thing online.
The Eusebius book is winding down. It’s still selling a few copies, although I haven’t checked since the summer precisely how many. It sold fairly well in the first year; in the second, to my surprise, more or less the same, after a distinct ‘sag’ in the early months. But I get the definite impression of the decline.
I’ve begun to think about how this can go online as well, as was always intended. I will place the English translation on my website, and make that freely available. But it would be good to make the entire PDF available as well, perhaps at Archive.org, if this can be done without relinquishing copyright. A copyright question arises on the PDF of the whole book because I don’t own the copyright of parts of it, which I only leased. I will look at the sales this year at New Year, and work out exactly how things are going. If I keep it in print, in April/May 2014 I shall have to pay Lightning Source another chunk of cash.
I’ve spent this evening scanning in a wodge of photocopies of pages from Van den Ven’s French translation of the Life of St. Symeon Stylites the Younger. It’s a daunting amount of text!
And I do feel drawn to translate some more of the Life of Severus of Antioch. Both these Lives are historical sources.
Finally there is still a lot of interesting material to look up in Cyril Mango’s article.
I’d also like to return to Ehrman’s Forgery and counterforgery and do some more work on this. A post containing all the primary sources used would be good; and I think Armin Baum gives that material in his book, and E. just made use of it. There is more to be done with the book also.
So there is no lack of tasks drawing my attention! If only I didn’t have to go to work for money as well!!!